Alibaba and Marine Harvest partner up to bring fresh salmon to China

Alibaba’s Win-Chain, one of China’s largest fresh food supply chain platforms and Marine Harvest, the world’s largest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon, made the announcement today.

The mega companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to form a strategic co-operation and combine efforts and capabilities to create the most effective supply chain for the distribution of salmon in China.

Win-Chain and Marine Harvest signed the MoU in Shanghai at a ceremony attended by Their Majesties King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway, the Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, Marine Harvest Chairman of the Board Ole-Eirik Lerøy and Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma and President Michael Evans.

This partnership aims to meet Chinese consumers’ increasing demand for fresh, high quality salmon, and for Win-Chain to become the leading outlet for salmon products in China, by using both companies’ resources and advantages in the industry. Marine Harvest has, as a part of the long-term commitment to the Chinese market, officially launched its first plant in Shanghai.

Win-Chain and Marine Harvest intend to work closely together on supply chain optimisation solutions from farm to end consumer, particularly in the areas of processing and cost effectiveness. In addition, Win-chain will become Marine Harvest’s strategic partner to sell fresh chilled salmon products directly from the Marine Harvest local processing factory in Shanghai.

Win-Chain will also provide consumer insights to support Marine Harvest’s branding and communications activities in addition to new product development and innovation.

“The demand for fresh seafood in China is rapidly growing, and Marine Harvest is one of the most trusted and world’s leading producers,” said Alibaba Group’s President, Michael Evans. “By partnering with Marine Harvest and leveraging the consumer reach, technology capabilities and logistics support of the Alibaba ecosystem, we will be able to deliver the best-in-class offering of fresh seafood products to consumers across China.”

“China is a very attractive market, and partnering with Alibaba Group and Win-Chain was a natural choice for us. We look forward to the many opportunities ahead to deepen our collaboration with Alibaba as we now ramp up our presence in China, for example through our new processing factory in Shanghai. We see that Chinese consumers love salmon, and together with Alibaba and Win-Chain we will bring even more fresh salmon to dinner tables in China,” said Marine Harvest Chairman of the Board Ole-Eirik Lerøy.